Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century (87)

Arnold Bennett was in a restaurant in Paris one day and a haggard old
woman, apparently a maniac, got into a tussle with a beautiful young waitress.
Bennett had an epiphany and realized that the old woman too must have once
been young and pretty and full of life. He decided there and then
to write a novel that would chart the arc of such a woman's life.
The result is this naturalist classic, by one of the last truly 19th Century
writers. But it begs the question: is an author a humanist or a condescending
phallus when it comes as a revelation to him that old unattractive women
may have lead full and interesting lives?

In the event, Bennett wrote a book about two sisters, Constance and
Sophia Baines, daughters of a shopkeeper in the Five Towns where he set
all of his novels. Sophia, who leads the more exciting life, runs
off to Paris with a louse of a husband, but Constance, modeled on the old
woman, stays in Bursley and marries the assistant in the shop. Late
in life, the two women are reunited, dying within a brief time of one another.
The version of the book that I read has an Introduction by JB Priestley,
wherein he says:

If we think first of the two sisters as young girls,
then this tale is grim, a tragedy; but if we think
first (as Bennett did) of the apparently dull old
women and then realise that they marched through
this epic, then the tale is a romance.

Now, I'm not the most sensitive flower in the garden, but I just find
that totally offensive. It seems to me that it is a fair representation
of the attitude of the intelligentsia throughout history: pity the
poor hoi polloi, what dull lives they must lead. But it defies logic
to assume that the great mass of mankind leads lives of desparation and
disappointment. It would seem that the contrary is probably true;
most folks probably lead perfectly satisfactory lives, even if they are
just working 9 to 5 and then going bowling or watching wrestling and NASCAR
on TV. We may not all pursue the same highbrow interests as the authors
and artists of the world, but there's no reason to assume that we're any
less happy with our lives. And even the fat old chick pumping coins
into a video poker machine may be as happy as a pig in slop.

I had honestly never even heard of Bennett until there was a piece
on him in the New York Times Book Review a couple of years ago.
I've since made an effort to read his stuff and I find much to like in
his work. But the attitude that gave birth to this book infects his
narrative voice and I found it pretty annoying.